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The H.264/264 video format was developed to provide good quality video at a lower bitrate level. The format has a large range of applications that attempt to cover video solutions from Internet streaming applications through to HDTV broadcasting with near lossless coding.

H.264/264 contains a number of features that allow it to compress video more effectively than previously. The main advantage of H.264 is the compression rate which is about twice as effective as MPEG-4. The image quality is a lot better and as such playback is more fluent, added to this the lower bit rate for network transmission means that it is widely adopted.

Associated programs

VideoLAN VLC Media Player

Developed by

International Telecommunications Union and International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Moving Picture Experts Group

The MOV file format is most commonly associated with Apple and the QuickTime video clip. The file format was developed by Apple as was QuickTime Player, it is compatible with both the Microsoft and MacOS platforms. MOV files are capable of storing two or more tracks which can be video, audio, text, graphics or effects. This flexibility makes this file format very popular for music and video editing.

MOV files use a proprietary compression algorithm and each track that is held within the file is made up of an encoded media stream or a reference to a media stream that is located in another file - this allows the embedding of existing media. QuickTime player which was developed and created by Apple allows a user to open and play .MOV files and later version of QuickTime Player, such as QuickTime Pro allows the user to edit and export .MOV files.